9
"Hello?" Heather's head poked through the open front door of the Smythe house, followed immediately by the rest of her body.
"Hi, Heather," said Mrs. Smythe from the living room. "Mark and Jennifer are in the garage."
"Thanks."
As she stepped into the garage, Heather spotted Mark and Jennifer huddled together in the workshop area, peering intently at the cold fusion apparatus.
Mark spotted her first. "Hey, Heather. Get over here and take a look at these readings."
"Why? Is something wrong?" Concern colored Heather's voice as she moved around the workbench that held the tank.
Peering over Jennifer's shoulder at the laptop’s flat-panel display, Heather’s concern faded away. "It looks good to me," she said.
"That's just it," said Jennifer, her fingers flying over the keyboard, bringing up a scrolling display of recorded data. "It might be a little too good. The National Science Contest is next week, and I'm afraid this project is going to stand out as something a group of high school kids might not have been able to pull off."
Mark rolled his eyes. "In other words, Jennifer’s worrying about nothing again."
Ever since they had each tried on one of the four headsets they had found on the alien ship, the three friends had experienced radical changes. Somehow, the metallic rings had formed a connection between their minds and the ship’s computer, activating portions of their brains that had previously been dormant. And those changes to their brains and neuromuscular systems had remained, even after the headsets had been removed.
For Heather, the most pronounced effect was her savantlike mathematical abilities. She could glance at a pebble and know that its volume was 4.3583 cubic centimeters. The same applied to her ability to manipulate the most complex mathematical equations. The answers were just there. It was nothing short of magical.
Heather shook her head. "Jen, this time I have to agree with Mark. Yes, the control systems are allowing the tank to generate a level of energy that is above the norm. But we’ve toned down our output to a level that is below that produced by several scientific teams."
"I don't know," said Jennifer. "Those research teams are made up of graduate students or professional physicists."
Heather patted Jennifer's shoulder and smiled down at her friend. "Did you see last year's National Science Contest winning entry? The kid made a working microscale model of a wind tunnel, instrumented and calibrated accurately enough to provide test results comparable to much larger, professional systems."
"Maybe."
"Sis, there's no ‘maybe’ to it. If Rain Girl here says it’s so, then that's the way it is."
Heather ran her hand along the tank, feeling the warmth that radiated out through the shielding. When they had first tested the thing, it had put off so much heat that a person could burn herself by touching it, and the whistle given off by the steam-powered generator had been teakettle loud.
Their mechanical improvements had resolved these problems, and the power produced by the apparatus had completely eliminated the Smythe electric bill. Best of all, they had finished their project paper, except for one more proofreading pass.
"By the way, you sure took your sweet time getting over here this morning," said Mark, a broad grin spreading across his face. "What did you do? Have a sleep-in this morning?"
Heather slapped her hand to her forehead. "Oh crap. I almost forgot what I wanted to talk to you guys about. Did you watch the news?"
"News? No. We've been in here working on this damn science project since seven a.m. like we all said we would be. Or maybe you forgot that we need this finished to cover our collective asses. Besides, our TV’s been on the fritz since the day before yesterday. Dad says the power supply is shot. He’s going to rebuild it this weekend."
Heather tapped Jennifer on the shoulder. "Jen. Pull your head out of the computer for a second. You'll want to hear this too."
When Jennifer didn’t respond, Mark rolled his eyes, reached over and smacked his twin on the top of the head.
"Ow! What is wrong with you?"
"Just trying to bring you back into the real world for a little bit. Heather’s been trying to get your attention for five minutes."
"Mark, I have not. It's only been about thirty seconds."
"Whatever."
Jennifer's scowl indicated that it didn't matter greatly whether it was five minutes or five hours. "Well, you've got it. What's the big emergency?"
Mark raised his eyebrows. "Whoa. What's up with the attitude?"
"Attitude? I'll give you some attitude if you slap me on the head again while I'm working on something. You'd be a little angry if I did something like that to you."
"Much as I hate to break up the brother-sister love fest," said Heather, "I do have something important to tell you guys. I was late getting over here this morning because of the news. There was a terrorist attack last night, right here on the highway between Pojoaque and Los Alamos."
Jennifer's eyes widened. "You're kidding."
"No, I'm not. The government had Highway 502 closed for more than eight hours. It was a giant mess for all the people trying to get into town from Santa Fe this morning."
Mark leaned forward, his attention suddenly fully focused on what Heather had to say. "The government? Don't you mean the police closed the highway?"
"No, I mean the government. The news reporters were going nuts about it. A nine-one-one call was made to the Espanola police just before one a.m. last night. The caller claimed to be the terrorist Abdul Aziz."
"The one that killed the scientist and his family in Los Alamos last fall?" Jennifer gasped.
"Yep. Anyway, he claimed that a terrorist attack was about to happen and gave the location. The Espanola Police sent several squad cars toward the spot before calling the state police and sheriff’s department. Although the report said a member of the Santa Clara Tribal Police ended up getting there first."
"So what happened?" Mark asked.
"A truck had been ambushed on the highway and two people killed. It was a big mess."
"Why was the government interested?"
"They said the truck contained sensitive US government equipment. The military kicked the local cops off the site and took control of the entire area."
"They kicked the local cops off the crime scene?" Jennifer asked.
"Yes."
"I bet they were mad as hell," Mark laughed.
"They didn't say so, but the policeman being interviewed didn't look happy about it. The FBI agent wasn't looking too pleased either."
Mark looked puzzled. "You mean they even had the FBI blocked? I didn't think that was possible."
Heather shrugged. "It sure had the press spun up. The only thing they could get out of the military spokesman was the same line about the classified cargo on the truck requiring special security measures. But there was something else."
Heather paused, rewarded almost immediately with a look of annoyance on Mark's face.
"Which was? Christ, Heather, if I'm going to have to pull the story out of you piece by piece, this is going to take all day."
"Someone in the Espanola Police Department leaked the nine-one-one tape to the media. They played it on the air. Talk about creepy. On the tape, Abdul Aziz mentioned that he was going to steal something from the Rho Project."
A gasp from Jennifer reminded Heather of the other twin's presence.
"And," Heather continued, "he said that the police should collect blood samples from the dead men. Aziz warned them not to share the samples with the government."
Mark, whose mouth had fallen open, closed it with a snap. "Holy crap. Aziz must know about the nanites. Did they say any more about the blood or what was on the truck?"
"The government spokesman just said that this was typical terrorist propaganda, lies designed to fool the Muslim faithful into believing wild conspiracy theories."
Mark had begun pacing back and forth beside the cold fusion tank. "But how could Aziz know that the Rho Project is working with alien nanotechnology? His people couldn't have intercepted one of our messages. We put those directly onto the NSA SIPRNet using the subspace transmitter."
"They must have an agent inside the NSA," said Heather.
"Oh, that is just great," said Jennifer. "The NSA director and his top computer scientist are dead, and now you think there may be a double agent on the team?"
Heather was surprised to see that her own hands were shaking. She clasped them together, hoping that Mark had not observed her nervous reaction to this line of thought.
"I don't know." The probabilities that cascaded through her mind for each of the possibilities were small. "Something doesn't add up. I just can't put my finger on what’s wrong."
Mark stopped pacing, turning to stare directly into Heather's eyes. "What about the quantum twin bug I put into Janet's laptop? Those two are bound to know something. I think it’s time we checked it out."
Jennifer rose to her feet so rapidly that she almost knocked over her chair. "Are you insane? Jack and Janet won't be able to detect a transmission, but that doesn't mean they can't detect the fact that files on the computer have been accessed."
"That's exactly why we have a computer whiz like you. Figure something out."
"Figure something out? I've already figured it out. It’s okay for us to passively monitor what they’re doing on that computer, but there’s no way we can remotely browse the files on that system without leaving behind some evidence that it’s been accessed. That's all there is to it."
Mark refused to be cowed. "Fine then. So they might be able to tell that someone browsed their system. They can't trace it, so what’s the problem?"
Jennifer's forehead furrowed in frustration. "You don't get it. If they notice the system has been tapped, they'll tear it apart. When they do, they’ll find the little QT microchip. Even though they won't be able to determine what it does, they’ll know that it was put there by someone who was in their house."
"Okay, so they’ll think it was that Priest fellow."
"Maybe. Maybe not. You were there too."
"I'm a senior in high school."
"Yeah, whose dad works on the Rho Project." Jennifer's lower jaw jutted out like an English bulldog’s.
Heather interrupted the argument. "Mark, I have to agree with Jennifer on this one."
"What a shock."
"Hey, I back you up too, when I think you're right."
"Oh yeah? And when was the last time that happened?"
"When we decided to explore the inside of the Second Ship, for one."
"Hell, that was almost a year ago."
Heather, feeling her own anger rising, took a deep breath. "All I’m saying is that Jack and Janet scare me. Even if they’re the good guys, they’re too dangerous to take unnecessary chances with…"
Jennifer nodded. "Please, Mark. Just go along with us on this one."
Mark looked from Heather to Jennifer, his eyes locking with those of his twin. "Okay, Sis. I'll go along with you, for now. But since you don’t like my idea, you two need to figure out another way for us to find out what’s happening. I have a bad feeling about this."
Heather watched as Mark turned and stalked out of the garage, leaving her and Jennifer staring after him. Something in her un-remembered dreams tugged at the corner of Heather's mind as she watched the door close behind him.
Like Mark, Heather had acquired a very bad feeling.